I just spent thirty minutes scrolling-through and deep-digging into online news for nothing in particular while feeling like I was doing my duty to stay informed about the world at large. I can only think this phenomenon is like sitting at a bar and exchanging this and that with a buddy. It’s a way of finding out what’s going on in a scattered, fragmentary way instead of reading a tight, thoughtful editorial page (if one of those still exists).
News tabs on the computer cover everything from politics to crime, to freak shows, to new products you never thought you needed. And in case you are a bit ADD there are plenty of 10-second cut-aways to guys catching fish in some faraway place, foreigners creating exotic dishes and animals in the rut. Boats in storms, athletes on the edge, strange fruit and fish in mud puddles…it all adds up to a hi-tech version of another generation’s sideshow at the circus.
The part that’s annoying is that I like to be absorbed and distracted by all that ‘seeming worthwhile’ busy information. But, how come, at the end of all the featured ‘hold my beer challenges’ and ‘holy-moley’ imagination benders, there’s lingering distress for all the wasted time and attention rather than in-depth insight into human nature and the world at large? Of course, if your mind works at that level of data input then online smorgasbords are very satisfying. They require much less effort than critiquing wonky policy pieces, listening to media ‘experts’ and boring into right-brain treatises.
Sometimes the torrent of data washing over us reminds me of school where we had to study and consolidate large blocks of data for regular test-regurgitation. Can you imagine a web site where viewers would be asked to absorb and summarize what they just read in a coherent statement or answer a series of true/false questions based on fragmented, disjointed news? I guess the nature of online Google is not deep intellectual consolidation and viewpoint formulation but more like casual blather over a back fence or beers in a bar.
The online data give us a sense of being alert to and aware of current issues and happenings. Which it is…to an extent. But maybe that’s not all we need.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
